Conservationists and the Battles to Keep Dams Out of
Yellowstone: Hetch Hetchy Overturned
Michael J. Yochim
Abstract
Between 1919 and 1938 irrigation interests in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming
repeatedly tried to construct reservoirs in Yellowstone National Park by damming
several large park lakes and Bechler Meadows. Conservationists of the time
joined forces with Horace Albright and Steven Mather of the National Park
Service to oppose the dams. Ultimately successful in all their efforts, their key
victory came in 1923 when they defeated an attempt to dam Yellowstone Lake.
This victory reversed the loss of protected status for national parks that had
occurred just ten years earlier at Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.
By chronicling the protracted conflict over dams in Yellowstone, I illustrate that
the conservationists (including Mather and Albright) reestablished the fundamental preservation policy of the national parks and empowered the newly created National Park Service to carry out its mission of park protection. This effort
was the key battle in proving national parks and wilderness to be inviolate to
industrial, exploitive uses. Conservationists both defined and tested the inviolate
policy in Yellowstone; their battles in Dinosaur National Monument and the
Grand Canyon cemented it into place.
Introduction
Far off, there lies a lovely lake
Which rests in beauty, there to take
Swift pictures of the changing sky,
Ethereal blues, and clouds piled high.
When black the sky, when fall the rains,
When blow fierce winds, her face remains
Still beautiful, but agitate,
Nor mirrors back their troubled state.
Within a park this treasure lies, —
Such region ne’er did man devise —
The hand of Mighty God, alone,
Could form the Park of Yellowstone.
Deep gashes score its rugged face,
Where mighty rivers fall and race,
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Where upflung pinnacles stand high,
With aeries crowned, whence eagles fly.
From some deep caldron, does it seem,
Come boiling springs that hiss and steam,
And Sullen mouths pit bubbling mud
Like o’erfed cattle retching cud.
There splendid geysers fling in air
Their plumes of mist — a sight most rare —
And terraced springs lip o’er the rocks
Enrobing them with crystal frocks.
Forever thus inviolate
May this our heritage of State
Untroubled lie, our Country’s trust,
Protected from men’s greed and lust,
Lest they the lesson fail to learn,
That though they struggle, pray and yearn,
God’s wasted gifts come not again;
Men’s follies — these, alas, remain!
Remain to rob the future ones
Who follow us, our daughters, sons.
They share with us, not ours alone,
Is beautiful Lake Yellowstone.
Molest it not, nor seek to bind
Its water, lest we find
‘Tis not the Lake, alone, that can
Be dammed, — but soul of ruthless Man!
—Anna Elizabeth Phelps, “Yellowstone Lake” (1938)
Yellowstone’s southwest corner is called “Cascade Corner” because it contains twenty-five well-known and seventy-two lesser-known waterfalls
(Rubinstein, Whittlesey, and Stevens 2000). It was highly contested terrain in the
1920s and 1930s. Irrigators from Idaho, to which state the local rivers drain,
attempted to dam the Bechler River and its tributaries at several different times
in order to store water for summer irrigation. Not to miss having its piece of the
pie, Montana irrigators proposed the same thing on Yellowstone Lake. Both
groups tried numerous times and in different ways to accomplish their goals, but
neither group ever succeeded. Park administrators and conservationists nationwide rose to the defense of the park, defeating the irrigators time and again.
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The battle pitted farmers struggling for economic survival against conservationists attempting to uphold the integrity of national parks. Local agricultural
interests took on powerful national preservation interests. Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian conservation dominated public lands policy during this era, but in this
case the preservationists won out and Yellowstone’s waters were not impounded.
Coming hard on the heels of the Hetch Hetchy controversy in California (see
Cohen 1988), many conservationists grasped the parallel in this battle. Unlike
Hetch Hetchy, however, the park protectors won, establishing the policy that
national parks were and are inviolate to industrial, exploitive uses. This policy, as
with most such policies, would be tested time and again, both in Yellowstone and
in other parks, such as Dinosaur National Monument in Utah in the 1950s. While
the policy continues to be tested today, it was the dam battle of Yellowstone that
reversed the Hetch Hetchy precedent, thereby illustrating that parks are to be preserved inviolate.
This story will relate the conflict between reclamationists and conservationists over dams in Yellowstone from 1915 to 1938. I will examine the motives of
both sides and the methods they used to further their ends. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of the significance of this “battle” in national park conservation history. Because the conservationist victory was so important in national park history, I will focus primarily on their efforts to prevent the dams, while
attempting to present the irrigators’perspective.
The First Round of Dam Proposals: “Hands Off the National Parks!”
Background. In much of Idaho and western Montana, geography challenges
agriculture. Areas that receive adequate annual precipitation for agriculture are
generally too high and cold to support it, while areas warm enough for agriculture do not generally receive sufficient rainfall. Farmers have typically solved
this problem by irrigating their cropland with water from the moist mountains. In
the early part of the twentieth century, natural river flows provided enough irrigation water during most summer seasons, but in extreme droughts even large
rivers such as the Snake were completely dewatered by irrigators (Fiege 1999).
At such times, the irrigation channels ran dry, leading to the failure of the farmers’crops. The summer of 1919 was one such summer; farmers in Idaho lost over
$10 million in failed crops.
To solve such problems, irrigators throughout the West began damming the
region’s rivers in the early 1900s to store the excess spring runoff for later summer use. In this way, they provided themselves with a form of natural insurance
against the inevitable drought. Drawn upon in all years, the reservoirs were especially important during times of drought. Reservoirs such as the Jackson Lake
Reservoir in Wyoming (upstream on the Snake River) were built during this period.
Beginning in 1915, farmers in eastern Idaho’s Fremont and Madison counties
began to search for a reservoir site to provide themselves with more reliable irrigation. They formed the North Fork Reservoir Company to pursue the reservoir,
and focused on a potential dam site on the Falls River in Yellowstone’s Cascade
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Corner (Berlin 1915; Colonel of Cavalry 1915; Hillman 1916; Martin 1917;
Albright 1985; Bartlett 1985; Fiege 1999). The U.S. Geological Survey had identified this potential site in its planning for the Jackson Lake Reservoir in 19021903 (U.S. Geological Survey 1904: Plate 34). When the drought of 1919 struck,
the farmers increased their agitation for the reservoir. In their favor was the political climate of the era, which favored reclamation, and the Hetch Hetchy precedent, which made damming in national parks possible. Against them, however,
were zealous leaders of the recently established National Park Service (NPS) and
its growing group of supporters in the conservation community. The stage was
set for controversy.
The battle: three major threats. Under the auspices of the
Fremont–Madison Reservoir Company (evidently descended from the North
Fork Reservoir Company), the farmers approached Secretary of the Interior
Franklin K. Lane to receive permission to build two dams in the Bechler region
(the second dam on Mountain Ash Creek, a tributary to the Falls River). They
also persuaded Senator John Frost Nugent and Representative Addison Smith of
Idaho to introduce bills into Congress in early 1920 enabling the Bechler dams.
On 6 April, the Senate passed Nugent’s bill, S. 3895, with little opposition, but
the House version (H.R. 12466) stalled (Lovin 2000). The farmers also proposed
damming Yellowstone Lake and diverting its waters under the Continental Divide
via a tunnel they would construct, but this proposal was never introduced into
Congress (Livingston [Montana] Enterprise, 7 December 1919; McMillen 1920).
With missionary zeal the farmers promoted the Falls River project. They were
Pinchot’s yeoman farmer, extending American society throughout the interior
West. They noted that
Idaho is dependent entirely on the development of its agricultural resources by
irrigation for further growth and prosperity. This development can only
progress by the conservation of our water resources through the construction
of storage reservoirs....[The Falls River reservoir] will be entirely devoted to
the creation of happy farm life and prosperity....At a time when the world is
largely filled with unrest, due to Bolsheviki activities in Russia and elsewhere,…it is well to remember that the owners of farm property and the people who are tilling their own soil are not Bolsheviki but really constitute our
most loyal and patriotic American citizens (Fremont-Madison Reservoir
Company 1920).
Agriculture, and thus reclamation, were the cornerstones of the great society all
Americans wanted.
The Falls River project was only the first of three substantial reclamation
threats to the integrity of Yellowstone that surfaced in 1920, as farmers throughout the region attempted to conserve the region’s water with dams in
Yellowstone. The second major threat arose from the discussions of a Livingston,
Montana, group called the “Yellowstone Irrigation Association.” This group
formed in December 1919 to promote the construction of a dam at Fishing
Bridge, the outlet of Yellowstone Lake. The stored water could then be sent down
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the Yellowstone River to irrigate farmland in the lower Yellowstone valley.
Senator Tom Walsh of Montana formalized this proposal with a bill he introduced on 7 December 1920 (Livingston Enterprise, 7 December 1919). This
group later tried to unite Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and
Utah in a collective reclamation raid on the national parks ([Mather] 1920;
Northern Wyoming Herald, 28 July 1920; Ise 1979). The interstate coalition,
however, was weak at best, and so the Irrigation Association focused its efforts
on the Yellowstone Lake dam.
Like the Idaho farmers, the Montana irrigators envisioned a better society in
the Yellowstone Valley if the Yellowstone Lake dam were built. They felt it would
both reduce the damaging floods wrought by the Yellowstone River and also provide enough water to irrigate up to a million acres. Promoters believed the dam
and consequent agricultural development would thereby stimulate development
of the region’s cities; the population of Livingston, for example, was forecast to
reach 50,000 (Livingston Enterprise, 19 March 1920). Utilitarian conservation
ideas are evident in their rhetoric:
The volume of flow in the Yellowstone river is twenty-six times as much during the flood period in the spring as it is during the irrigation season in the late
summer.…The river becomes a veritable torrent. This enormous volume of
water runs to waste. Not only is there a waste of water and energy but the raging torrent does a damage that runs into the hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars (Yellowstone Irrigation Association 1921).
The third significant threat came from Congress’passage of the Water Power
Act on 10 June 1920. This act created the Federal Water Power Commission,
which promoted irrigation and hydroelectric development on federal lands,
including the national parks. While not as immediate a threat to Yellowstone’s
integrity, the act posed a broader threat to the National Park System in general,
because it gave this commission blanket authority to impound waters in the parks
without congressional approval. Reclamationists saw the act in another light, as
one would expect: they believed that “the greatest beauty in the world is the
beauty of use;” and “[i]f the United States is to compete with Europe in foreign
trade it must at least have cheap power for industrial use” (Electrical World
1920).
By the end of 1920, Yellowstone was facing a three-pronged attack on its
integrity. Should any of the three proposals pass, Yellowstone would cease to
exist as a pristine national park. Because Yellowstone was the gem in the crown
of the National Park System, a weakening of its protection would probably lead
to the fall of the entire system. What happened in Yellowstone, then, was key to
the future of wilderness preservation in the United States. The reclamation threat,
while supported by well-meaning people, did indeed have far-reaching implications.
Conservationist response. NPS and its conservationist supporters, then, were
faced with an attack that threatened to make Hetch Hetchy commonplace
throughout the National Park System. Park supporters responded in 1919 and
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1920 with an aggressive campaign to protect national park integrity. They began
with immediate action to stymie dam surveying efforts in the parks, then followed that by publicizing the threats to the parks in the popular and conservation
press and urging readers to write in defense of the parks. Political and civic
actions rounded out their repertoire of defensive actions. The odds were long,
though, given the reclamation fervor of the day. Still, if they could not defend
Yellowstone’s integrity, what would remain of the national parks?
Secretary of the Interior Lane favored reclamation, and was thus sympathetic
to the proposal of the Fremont–Madison Reservoir Company. He ordered NPS
Director Stephen Mather not only to allow a reclamation survey of the area but
also to follow that with a report favoring the project. There is evidence to suggest that Mather did not originally oppose the dams. In a letter to him, J. Horace
McFarland of the American Civic Association stated: “I view with deep regret
and great alarm the fact that you have formally consented to the passage of the
bill,…and have apparently advised the Secretary of the Interior to interpose no
objection to it” (McFarland 1920b; Livingston Enterprise, 28 May 1920).
Regardless of whether this is true, it is clear from his following actions that
Mather strenuously opposed the dams. As director of the country’s newest public conservation agency, he was not about to endorse another such Hetch Hetchy
degradation of the National Park System. So, he initially dragged his feet on the
report, then lost the order directing him to do it, then determined to resign if he
indeed had to submit it (Bartlett 1985). The report he finally did submit was
adverse to reclamation, stating:
I can not submit at this time anything but an adverse report on this project, and
urge upon you as strongly as I can the necessity for taking no favorable action
upon it. Should I take any other view, as I see it, I would be violating the obligations imposed upon me as Director of the National Park Service, which is to
so administer Yellowstone Park that it be preserved in its natural state unimpaired for future generations (Mather 1920b).
Lane was intent upon surveying Yellowstone’s reclamation possibilities, however. On 28 July 1919, he directed that a permit be given to I.B. Perrine of Twin
Falls, Idaho, to make a preliminary reclamation survey of the Falls River Basin
and all four of the park’s large lakes. Acting NPS Director Arno Cammerer
telegrammed this information to Horace Albright, the superintendent of
Yellowstone, who responded in a telegram:
Any or all of these projects will ruin absolutely Yellowstone Park for public
use. Hetch Hetchy project in Yosemite [is] insignificant in comparison. Public
condemnation of these projects will be a thousand times more vitriolic.…Fall
River Basin might well be surveyed but am sure construction [of] dam will
cause wiping out our biggest moose herd (Cammerer 1919; see also Albright
1919).
A few days later, Lane carried through with his directions, granting the permit to Perrine, who was thus headed to Yellowstone for his survey. To warn
Albright, J.J. Cotter of the Interior Department sent an encoded telegram stating:
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“Unvouched seamanship sardachate toponym to perrine to subacute preliminary
venge in fistful.” Decoded, the message meant, “Secretary of the Interior has
given authority [to Perrine] to make preliminary surveys in Yellowstone Park”
(Cotter 1919). Alerted by the telegram, Albright scrambled to stymie Perrine.
Because it was late in the tourist season, he sent the horses that Perrine would
need for his survey to winter pasture early, and directed the boat company to put
up its boats for winter storage (Albright 1985; Bartlett 1985). These actions kept
Perrine from fully surveying the park, but he was still able to survey the Falls
River Basin and Yellowstone Lake, and recommended both for impoundment
(Bickel [n.d.]). Even though Albright was able to partially deflect the irrigators’
onslaught, they had obtained enough information for their needs, and the threat
persisted.
To help protect the parks against such threats, Mather had helped form the
National Parks Association (NPA; today’s National Parks Conservation
Association) in 1919. Led by Robert Sterling Yard, the young organization
jumped into the dam fray the following year. Yard editorialized against the dams
in his organization’s journal and issued a special magazine whose lead article
was entitled “Hands Off the National Parks” ([Yard] 1920a). He consistently
urged association members and the public “to the defense” ([Yard] 1920b).
Realizing that his small circulation was inadequate for the size of this challenge,
he pulled together a network of “more than 12,000 clubs and associations
throughout the United States, representing paid memberships of nearly four million people in opposition to the dams” (Yard 1922a). The Appalachian Mountain
Club, Sierra Club, Mazamas, and Mountaineers assisted him in setting up regional organizations to address the issue in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland,
and Seattle. Yard’s network of groups was impressive and diverse:
By Christmas [1920], the organizations actively at work included business
associations of various kinds, chambers of commerce, teachers’clubs and federations, shooting and fishing clubs, manufacturers’ associations, patriotic
leagues, automobile associations, travel and outing clubs, universities, bar
associations, nature study clubs, political clubs and all the greater scientific
associations in the land (Yard 1922a).
Yard also networked with the country’s women’s organizations, specifically
thanking them twice in the National Parks Bulletin for their strong stance against
the dams ([Yard] 1920c; [Yard] 1921a; see also McMillen 1920). The number of
cooperating associations bears witness to the gravity of this threat upon the idea
of the national park.
Some of Yard’s most active allies were the conservation groups in existence at
the time. For example, the Audubon Societies of America sent out 25,000 circu lars calling for letters in opposition to the dams and soliciting donations, which
they used as a “National Parks Defense Fund” (Bird Lore 1921b). Yard was successful in uniting virtually all the country’s conservation groups in opposition to
the dams, including the Sierra Club (Sierra Club 1920), Boone and Crockett Club
(Livingston Enterprise, 12 December 1920), and National Geographic Society
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([Yard] 1921a). Of all the groups, though, his, the NPA, was most consistent in
its defense of Yellowstone and was arguably the leader of the conservationist battle against the dams (Miles 1995).
Yard and Mather knew that the national parks were David battling the reclamation Goliath. They had to reach as wide an audience as possible, so they also
published defenses of Yellowstone in popular or civic magazines. Both men were
well connected with the leading conservationists of the day, such as George Bird
Grinnell, Emerson Hough, McFarland, and the editor of The Outlook, a popular
magazine similar in style to The Nation or The Independent. The editor (who
remains unidentified, his or her name not being given on the masthead) closely
supported Yard in opposing the dams and was clearly the opposition leader in the
popular press.
Together, the American conservationists worked against the dams throughout
1920 and 1921. They frequently reported on the congressional progress of the
dams and urged readers to write their representatives in opposition (see National
Parks Association Bulletin, no. 10, 25 June 1920; no. 11, 30 September 1920; no.
13, 20 November 1920; no. 14, 22 December 1920; no. 15, 10 February 1921;
nos. 16 and 17, both 20 March 1920; and no. 19, 23 May 1921; see also The
Outlook, 7 July 1920, 28 July 1920, 8 September 1920, 6 October 1920, and 12
January 1921). Reclamationists were busy, too, promoting the dams. Five key
issues emerged in the rhetoric, with the reclamationists and conservationists at
loggerheads. An examination of these themes follows.
Major theme 1: dangerous precedent. Conservationists deplored the fact
that if these dams were permitted, they would set a dangerous precedent, opening all national parks for commercial exploitation. McFarland, president of the
American Civic Association, was the first to see this threat. In an article in The
Independent on 8 May 1920 he called Smith’s bill “the entering wedge of commercialism” (McFarland 1920c). Yard picked up on this fear shortly thereafter,
and repeatedly articulated it: “One thing we certainly know, and that is that the
granting of even one irrigation privilege in any national park will mark the
beginning of a swift end; within five years thereafter all our national parks will
be controlled by local irrigationists, and complete commercialization inevitably
will follow” ([Yard] 1920d: 6; emphasis in original). He strongly felt that this
was a nationally significant threat, stating: “[The Walsh bill] constitutes the most
insidious and dangerous blow ever aimed at American Conservation, because it
seems to ask for so little while really demanding the entire National Parks
System, for if Congress grants Senator Walsh his way with Yellowstone it cannot
refuse to grant others their way with other national parks” ([Yard] 1921b: 1).
Mather agreed with Yard and McFarland, stating that “one misstep is fatal”
([Mather] 1920: 34)
The Hetch Hetchy precedent was indeed a welcome mat for the irrigationists.
In its literature promoting the dam on Yellowstone Lake, the Yellowstone
Irrigation Association noted that “[t]here is already a dam in Yosemite park, by
congressional permission.” Although the association went on to argue that Hetch
Hetchy was not a precedent, they clearly knew about it—and were promoting the
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same idea in Yellowstone (Yellowstone Irrigation Association 1921).
Downplaying the similarity did not remove the threat.
Conservationists were quick to grasp the Hetch Hetchy parallel, and knew the
Yellowstone attacks were key to overturning its precedent. The Outlook’s editor
was the first to articulate the parallel in an article entitled “Another Hetch
Hetchy,” published 7 July 1920. Evidently, the editor felt that the Hetch Hetchy
story was so well known that he did not include explanation of it or of its parallel to Yellowstone in that article (The Outlook 1920a). McFarland made the parallel more explicit in The Outlook three weeks later, but seemed to downplay
Hetch Hetchy’s significance, perhaps out of fear it would be repeated. For example, he felt that the Yellowstone dam situation was more significant than Hetch
Hetchy because the dams on Yellowstone Lake would ruin a key feature of
Yellowstone, where the dam at Hetch Hetchy did not impair Yosemite’s key feature, the valley. Further, he felt that the fact that few people would benefit from
damming Yellowstone, as opposed to the great numbers of San Franciscans who
benefited from damming Hetch Hetchy, made the Yellowstone dams all the more
egregious (McFarland 1920d). Further evidence that conservationists saw, and
feared, the parallel is the fact that they referred to Hetch Hetchy only two more
times through 1938—in Mather’s annual report for 1920 and in an article by
Hough in The Saturday Evening Post the same year ([Mather] 1920; Hough
1920).
Fear of a dangerous precedent was a very common theme articulated in the literature at that time. Table 1 summarizes other authors and journals that mentioned it in some way.
Major theme 2: populism. Irrigators felt they needed the dams to build democratic society in the West—the same thing Easterners had already done. When
they encountered opposition to their dam proposals, they felt as though the
Easterners were intruding into someone else’s business, as if wealthy elites were
dictating how they should be allowed to run their lives. “I am getting a little
tired,” said Major Fred Reed, managing director of the Idaho Reclamation
Association, “of having everything that the West tries to do, opposed by those
super-men of the East, who stand with their heads in the clouds, agitating against
the constructive development of the West...” ([Reed] 1920: 7). This was a common perception at the time, particularly repeated in the Livingston Enterprise:
Montana shall never build up manufacturing industries in Yellowstone National
park if George Byrd [sic] Grinnell, professional conservationist and writer of
New York, can prevent. That Montana capital is getting ready to exploit
Yellowstone park and turn it into one vast factory in [is] Grinnell’s latest
nightmare.…Mr. Grinnell should stick to his legitimate field (Livingston
Enterprise, 11 May 1920; see also Livingston Enterprise, 4 June 1920, and
Boise Statesman, 26 April 1920).
Yet, the national parks are national property, so the conservationists justifiably
felt the dams intruded upon public property. The populism argument—that few
would profit at the expense of the many—was articulated especially by The
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Outlook. The few to profit were the irrigationists, who clearly stood to gain by
damming Yellowstone waters. The many to lose were the citizens of the United
States, who owned Yellowstone and would lose its resources under water.
Writing in The Outlook, McFarland characterized irrigationists as a thoughtless
minority:
That their claims and desires are as wholly selfish as that of any others who
would take the public property for private benefit is also obvious.…[I]t will
cost more money if these men must pay, as other irrigation farmers now pay,
for developing their own sources of water. They desire, to put it plainly, to profit at the public expense…(McFarland 1920d: 578).
The Outlook found the fact that some dam proposals called for government
financing of the dams to be particularly galling: “It is bad to have natural
resources, which belong to the people, taken by private interests; it is worse to
have these resources used for exploiting the people who really own them; it is
unbearable to require the people to pay for building the plants to be used in the
exploitation” (The Outlook 1920b: 68). The magazine’s editor continued questioning these “anti-Progressive” dams into the next year (Waugh 1921).
The populist argument took other tacks as well. Mather, for example, in his
report to Lane, noted that other reservoir sites were available (such as Henry’s
Lake on the upper North Fork of the Snake River), but would involve the purTable 1. Other authors and journals that argued against the precedent of damming in
national parks.
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chase of private lands. He felt that the irrigationists were pursuing the
Yellowstone sites because they were less expensive, and wondered: “Are we justified in allowing the use of national park lands just because they belong to the
government and could be developed with less expense?” (Mather 1920b). Other
authors who used such populist arguments against the dams included Hough in
“Pawning the Heirlooms,” a very influential Saturday Evening Post article, and
T. Gilbert Pearson of the Audubon Society (Hough 1920; [Pearson] 1921; see
also American Forestry 1920).
Major theme 3: landscape character. Irrigators believed that their dams
would not threaten, but would rather enhance, park resources. The Bechler dam
“will result in replacing what is now mostly an unattractive swamp with a mountain lake” (Swendson 1920: 6). The swamp had “no value or scenic beauty, but
[was] infested with flies and mosquitoes during the summer months.” Besides
eliminating the swamp and its pests, the reservoir and its attendant roads would
provide greater access to this area of the park, thereby reducing the fire danger
(Bickel 1920: 8). In a similar manner, the Yellowstone Lake dam would enhance
the park by replacing Fishing Bridge, a “rickety old pile structure,” with “[a] permanent, artistic bridge.” Further, the topography surrounding Yellowstone Lake
was steep, meaning few banks of mud would be created and few trees drowned
through inundation (Yellowstone Irrigation Association 1921).
As one would expect, conservationists felt differently. They thought nature
was beautiful in its intact condition. For them, extolling the virtues of the threatened areas was another successful argument, though they found themselves
scrambling to determine just what the virtues of the Bechler region were, as it
was not well known (almost fifty years after the park was created!). To answer
the question, William C. Gregg, a New Jersey member of the NPA, explored the
area in 1920 and again in 1921. He was very impressed at the waterfalls in the
Bechler region, stating “those areas of the park contain divine beauties of which
the men who fixed the limits of the park had no knowledge whatever.…[We]
found more falls and cascades than in all the known parts of the park put together” (Gregg 1921: 469). Likewise, he claimed that the “Bechler Valley is the
widest, most level and most beautiful in the Yellowstone National Park” (Gregg
1920: 83). His findings were widely reported in the press at the time ([Mather]
1921).
Besides its beauties, the Falls River basin was important for wildlife, particularly for moose. As with most wildlife, moose populations were reduced throughout the West at this time, with the Bechler region remaining a stronghold for
them. Conservationists noted the obvious implications of the Bechler dams for
moose: “If Congress passes [the Smith] bill, Congress will sign the death warrant
of one of America’s noblest wild animals…the famous Yellowstone moose”
(Field and Stream 1920; see also Hough 1920; Mather 1920a).
Yellowstone Lake’s virtues were easier to promote, as the lake was well
known. Dams there would flood important resources overlooked by the irrigators, such as the white pelican rookery on the Molly Islands and geothermal fea tures such as the Fishing Cone at West Thumb. Mather and Albright estimated
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that a 25-foot dam on Yellowstone Lake (the average of the various proposals)
would flood about 9,000 acres, much of that in the low-lying Pelican and upper
Yellowstone river valleys. In flooding them, “several thousand acres of the finest
feeding grounds for elk, deer, and other game would be made worthless”
([Mather] 1920: 26; see also The Outlook 1920c; Mather 1920a; Hough 1920;
[Yard] 1921b). George Shiras III (for whom the Shiras subspecies of moose
found in the northern Rockies is named) publicized the resources of the remoter
portions of Yellowstone Lake in Forest and Stream in February 1921. He noted:
“By raising the Lake to the proposed level, all the sand beaches, coves, and all
the islands…would be obliterated, while the water would cover the lower delta
of the Yellowstone for a number of miles,” thereby destroying important waterfowl and moose habitat (Shiras 1921).
Conservationists such as Gregg frequently used emotive and quasi-religious
language to describe the area, thereby conferring such values on the place and
stimulating public response. Gregg’s description of the “divine beauties” of the
Bechler region is one example, as is Hough’s descriptions of Yellowstone as a
place made by God, an “heirloom,” and a place “sacred, never to be parted with”
(Hough 1920: 12). Yard used such imagery as well, stating that “the essential
quality distinguishing National Parks…is their condition of untouched Nature,
their status as museums of the original American wilderness…” ([Yard] 1920b:
2). Conservationists consistently used such language to describe Yellowstone,
giving it a sacredness that made the proposals to exploit it all the more offensive.
Major theme 4: reser voir characteristics. Reservoirs are ugly when drawn
down, exposing bare mud along the shores. Irrigators were aware of this problem, and tried to minimize the “virtual” impact of that mud. For example, Idaho’s
Commissioner of Reclamation, Warren G. Swendsen, stated that “it is true, upon
certain years of extreme drouth, [reservoir water] will be drawn out for irrigation
uses, or partly so, at least during the period of perhaps two or three months”
(Swendsen 1920). Swendsen’s use of qualifiers befits his governmental position.
Others felt that some sacrifice in beauty was necessary to build the good society: “Beauty is only skin deep; but usefulness combined with beauty is a wonderful combination and a blessing to those who have this, and a joy to all” (Bickel
1920). Note the theme of utilitarianism here, a theme far more common in reclamationist literature than that of natural sacredness. Irrigators believed in what
they were doing, failing to see how dams could threaten the national park idea.
The conservationists found the muddy banks of a reservoir an easy weak spot
to attack. Facilitating their dam opposition was the presence of Jackson Lake just
south of the park, a handy example of what an irrigation impoundment would do
to Yellowstone’s natural scenery. The U.S. Reclamation Service (now Bureau of
Reclamation) had raised the level of the natural Jackson Lake with a dam in 1907
(expanding it further in 1911 and 1916), but failed to log the inundated trees at
that time. Consequently, there were “dead trees everywhere about its boundaries
[that] pollute the water and kill the fish” ([Mather] 1920: 23). Further, as irrigators gradually drained the lake to its natural level every summer, they exposed a
bathtub ring of mud around it. Conservationists found this deplorable; for examYellowstone Lake
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ple, The Outlook noted that “the gradual drawing down of [Yellowstone Lake’s]
water ... will almost certainly leave those shores slimy, marshy, and depressing,
just as the same process has utterly ruined the once notable beauty of Jackson
Lake…” (The Outlook 1920c: 255; see also McFarland 1920d; [Mather] 1920).
Major theme 5: factual problems. In their zeal to see the dams built, proponents may have exaggerated their benefits. For example, they felt that both the
Yellowstone Lake and Bechler sites were the only or best sites available, when in
fact there were other potential sites downstream (Swendsen 1920; Yellowstone
Irrigation Association 1921).
Conservationists were quick to note the factual problems evident in the promoters’ proposals. In his “Pawning the Heirlooms” article, Hough noted several
problems. First, a dam on Yellowstone Lake would do little to control the floods
plaguing the lower Yellowstone River valley, because many large tributaries
joined the Yellowstone downstream of the lake and upstream of the suffering
communities. Next, he pointed out an obvious dam site at Yankee Jim Canyon,
about fifteen miles north of the park. This site would more effectively control
floods, and would not inundate park land (recall that conservationists such as
Mather made the same point regarding the Falls River Basin dam). Finally, he
speculated that a dam on Yellowstone Lake “would disarrange and probably
sometimes wipe out both falls of the Yellowstone River; would ruin the Grand
Canyon some or all the time, leaving it the pathway of a mill-pond creek”
(Hough 1920: 98).
In testimony at a congressional hearing on the Walsh proposal (see below),
George Goodwin, chief engineer of NPS, concisely articulated the same points.
Additionally, he noted that the additional six feet of water storage that Walsh’s
dam would produce was only adequate to irrigate 20% of the acreage claimed by
Walsh ([Yard] 1921b; see also Mather 1920c). In the end, none of the dam sites
downstream were ever used.
Initial controversy resolved. Going into 1921, then, reclamationists had the
upper hand, merely because theirs was the cause célèbre throughout the West.
Although conservationist strength was growing, Yellowstone’s integrity was
uncertain at best, and doubtful at worst. National parks faced the gloomy potential of destruction.
Yet, the tide turned. As 1921 unfolded, Congress made decisions on the various dam proposals—all in favor of Yellowstone preservation. The conservationists’ advocacy against the dams had its desired effect: public opinion turned
against the various dam proposals. In February 1921, both the Smith and the
Walsh bills met their fate. The Smith Bill was the first to die when it was not
brought to a vote in the House before the session closed. Although Smith reintroduced it the following year, it did not go anywhere.
The Walsh bill was the next to see action. Hearings on it were scheduled for
the start of the next congressional session, but when five members of the
Yellowstone Irrigation Association arrived in Washington, Walsh held a surprise
hearing on Washington’s Birthday, and did not invite any dam opponents. It goes
without saying that testimony at that hearing was favorable to the dams, using the
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same flood control and irrigation arguments. Walsh did hold a hearing for the
opponents, but tried to catch them off guard by holding it earlier than planned (on
28 February 1921; Haines 1996). This actually turned out to be somewhat providential, since Albright was then present in Washington. Four nights before the
second hearing, he met with several other prominent conservationists such as
Frederick Law Olmsted, Yard, and George Goodwin, to work on their responses.
They broke up about midnight and went home (Albright 1921).
At the hearing, Albright spoke as expected, repeating many of the themes
already discussed, such as deploring the submergence of valuable park resources.
Olmsted spoke in opposition to the removal of management authority from NPS
(Olmsted 1921). McFarland, Yard, and the new Secretary of the Interior, John
Payne (who was more of a park defender than his predecessor Lane was) argued
that the dam would open all national parks to exploitive commercialism: “when
once you establish the principle that you can encroach on a national park for irrigation or water power, you commence a process which will end only in the entire
commercialization of them all” ([Yard] 1921c: 3; see also [Yard] 1921b).
Goodwin pointed up the factual problems inherent in the proposal. The conservationist testimony, especially Goodwin’s, “made such a shambles of the arguments of the promoters that the Walsh bill was not reported” out of committee
(Ise 1979: 313). At least for now, the conservationists had won.
Walsh, however, was not so easily defeated, for he reintroduced his bill in
1922, and got the support of (another) new Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall.
Fall was initially ambivalent about the dam, but eventually stated the
“Yellowstone dam will be built” ([Yard] 1922: 1). Walsh needed to get an identical bill introduced into the House, but the August 1922 election in Montana
defeated his plans when Scott Leavitt, a conservationist opposed to the dams,
was elected. Timing, again, was key—and fortunate (for the conservationists,
anyway): Fall’s involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal broke about the same
time as the election. Anyone associated with him, such as Leavitt’s opponent, did
poorly (Ise 1979; Haines 1996). Further, Senator John Kendrick of Wyoming
came out in opposition to the dam at about the same time. Leavitt’s election and
Kendrick’s opposition combined to kill Walsh’s bill for the time being, and the
conservationists won again (Billings [Montana] Gazette, 15 September 1922).
The Water Power Bill’s threat was addressed last. Upon learning of the new
authority, Mather protested to Secretary of the Interior Payne. He in turn protested to President Woodrow Wilson, who unfortunately felt compelled to sign the
act or risk losing support of several western states in the upcoming election. He
did, however, exact a pledge from the bill’s sponsors to amend the bill in the next
congressional session to exclude the national parks (Miles 1995).
Yard, knowing that pressure for that amendment would be key to its actual
passage, galvanized support among his allies nationwide. Probably due to that
pressure, Senators Walsh of Montana and Wesley Jones of Washington, two of
the bill’s sponsors, kept their promise on 3 March 1921 (U.S. Congress, Senate
1921: S4554). They were reluctant to do so, but probably acted in response to
public pressure, as Yard indicated in an article announcing Wilson’s signature to
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the amendment: “The campaign’s greatest achievement…was…the impression
made upon Congress of the people’s determination to hold their national parks
and monuments in complete conservation” ([Yard] 1921c: 1; see also Shankland
1970). With the passage of this amendment, the third of the major reclamation
threats to Yellowstone passed away—all three defeats occurring within two
months!
Conservationists attributed their victories to their publicity campaign.
Albright claimed that “the ‘Pawning the Heirlooms’article and Mr. Gregg’s article have absolutely stopped the irrigation legislation.…Several Wyoming papers
have republished the ‘Heirlooms’ story.” He also felt the publicity turned local
sentiment against the dams: “[E]qually important, [the articles] have served to
align Wyoming against all schemes of every kind that threaten commercialism of
Yellowstone Park; they have split sentiment in Montana in such a way that all of
thinking people have come over to our side; and they have established large
doubts in the minds of lots of people in Idaho” (Albright 1920).
Acting NPS Director Cammerer credited publicity of a different sort. He felt
that by publishing their proposals, the irrigators led to their own undoing,
because the public was horrified to see just what they proposed to do to the park
(Cammerer 1923). Finally, letters written by thousands of Americans to their representatives must certainly have swayed those politicians (Christian Science
Monitor 1921). Conservationists drew upon a national audience, while the irrigators’ audience was only regional; the larger national audience made the conservationists successful—and would continue to do so in the years ahead.
Inviolate policy is established. As time would tell, defeating these three
threats turned the tide in favor of protection. For example, when Congressman
Smith reintroduced his Falls River proposal in 1923, Albright stated: “I am not
very much afraid of this Fall River Basin project any more” (Albright 1923).
Likewise, Mather felt that in amending the Water Power Act, “Congress placed
itself on record, upholding the inviolability of the national parks” ([Mather]
1921: 22; see also [Mather] 1924: 5). Dam proposals would surface time and
again through 1937, but after the 1921 victories, these proposals went nowhere.
Conservationists drew no more parallels with Hetch Hetchy in the next fifteen
years, suggesting the emergence of a new, important policy of park security.
Hetch Hetchy’s precedent was overturned, replaced by a new policy of inviolability. National parks were secure.
The opening address of the 1923 summer tourist season in Yellowstone provides further evidence that the tide had indeed turned. There, John Wesley Hill
spoke for President Harding and (still another) new Secretary of the Interior,
Hubert Work, and announced, “it is at last the established policy of the
Government that our national parks must and shall forever be maintained in
absolute, unimpaired form, not only for the present, but for all time to come”
([Yard] 1923a: 2; Haines 1996). Hill’s speech was widely reported as policy-setting. For example, NPA celebrated the fact that President Harding thus became
the “first President to announce publicly a general Administration policy of
absolute, uncompromising conservation for the National Parks System and every
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one of its component units” (Irrigation Scrapbook, 1921–1928).
Harding himself visited Yellowstone later that summer, where he stated that
“commercialism will never be tolerated here so long as I have the power to pre vent it.” In August 1923 President Coolidge announced that he would maintain
his predecessor’s policies, Harding having died shortly after visiting Yellowstone
([Yard] 1923b: 1; Albright 1985). The amendment to the Water Power Bill, the
defeat of the Walsh and Smith bills, and Hill’s speech collectively established the
inviolate policy; from here on out, all battles were a defense of it, rather than the
more daunting battle of establishing policy in the first place.
Reaffirming the Policy: “Keep the Looters Out!”
Now that conservationists had established important policy, they had to
defend it. Droughts were inevitable, and irrigation was essential for agriculture
in the area. Consequently, reclamationists were persistent, which gave the conservationists ample opportunity to uphold the new policy. Senator Walsh soon
provided the first challenge to the policy when he introduced two more bills to
dam the outlet of Yellowstone Lake in December 1923. With respect to the first
of these bills, Yard noted that Walsh had “changed the ugly word ‘dam’ to the
pretty word ‘weir,’ which means dam” ([Yard] 1924a: 6). The other bill would
have appropriated $10,000 for a reclamation survey of Yellowstone Lake. Walsh
could not raise that money in Montana itself, so his bill directed Congress to
finance the survey (Ise 1979). Secretary Work, though, reported adversely on the
bills the following spring, stating:
[A]bsolute preservation should be the unwavering policy of Yellowstone
administration, for inestimably valuable and precious as this great park now is
to the Nation, it will prove of increasingly greater value with each passing year
as the common heritage of coming generations.…Any plan for the commercial
exploitation of the park must therefore, in my opinion, by the very nature of its
aims and purposes, immediately be foredoomed to failure, and I therefore can
not recommend favorable consideration of the pending measure (Work 1924).
Work’s letter effectively killed the two bills. Senator Walsh was not to be heard
from again, although the idea of damming Yellowstone Lake persisted.
Compared with earlier dam proposals, Walsh’s last two bills garnered little
opposition, perhaps because Work was so staunchly protective of the parks, or
perhaps due to the strength of the policy established in 1921. Still, the NPA
remained opposed to the Walsh bills, as did The Outlook, which published one
article restating their former position: “Hands Off the National Parks!” (The
Outlook 1923: 357). Women’s clubs continued to be active in opposing the dams.
For example, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs declared for “defending
national parks, maintaining their standards and perfecting protective laws…until
Congress definitely recognizes the National Parks System as a beneficent national institution whose conservation and highest standards must by no means be
imperiled, but maintained for the Nation’s benefit for all time” ([Yard] 1924b: 5).
Conservationists enjoyed a reprieve for a couple of years, but in 1926
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Representative Addison Smith of Idaho concocted another plan to build dams in
Cascade Corner. Smith could see the futility, after the conservationist victory in
proving national parks inviolate, of attempting to build his dam within the park.
He reasoned, then, that if he could not build Idaho’s dam in the park, why not cut
that land out of the park? Eliminating Bechler Meadows from Yellowstone was
precisely the proposal he made in 1926 (he had circulated the idea as early as
1921; see Smith 1921; Little 1921; Boise Idaho Statesman, 10 August 1921).
Further, to make the excision palatable to his opponents, he offered a carrot in
exchange for the 12,000 acres of Bechler: the addition to the park of the 64,000acre Fremont Game Reserve, which was just west of the park and north of
Bechler. Smith linked this proposal to a bill regarding other boundary changes
for Yellowstone that was circulating at the same time, and threw his support
behind the addition of another 200,000 acres to Yellowstone, the Yellowstone
River headwaters area, on the park’s southeast side. President Coolidge, perhaps
too tempted by the prospect of adding the spectacular headwaters area to
Yellowstone, endorsed the measure (Lovin 2000). Smith’s proposal was very
popular in southeast Idaho, where 1,500 people stacked a hearing in favor of the
Bechler dam in 1926 (Boise Idaho Capital News, 19 August 1926).
Conservationists did not appreciate the compromise, however. Both NPA and
The Outlook launched vigorous attacks against the proposal in 1926 and 1927.
They recycled many arguments from their successful campaigns earlier in the
decade. NPA used its strongest language to date to describe the inviolability of
national parks, stating: “A National Park…should be as sacred as a temple” (van
Dyke 1926: 8). Both organizations published descriptions of the Bechler area: an
article by Horace Albright in the National Parks Bulletin (Albright 1926; see also
Albright 1928) and one by Eleanor Marshall Thurman, extension secretary of the
American Civic Association, in The Outlook. Thurman eloquently concluded her
article by stating that “In my six days [in the park] I saw no other section which
offered such facilities for the man or woman or family seeking to spend a few
days of quiet and peace away from the honk and fumes of automobiles, the noise
and smoke of trains, and the hue and cry of the typical tourist” (Thurman 1926:
435). The groups again compared the proposed reservoirs to Jackson Lake’s
“low-water horror of muck,” “deprecated desolation,” ([Yard] 1927: 17) and
“gaunt skeletons of timber and its ugly mud shores” (Thurman 1926: 434; see
also The Outlook 1926b). They also questioned whether it was “good national
policy to establish a precedent for cutting large areas out of national parks to
serve local purposes” ([Yard] 1927: 17; see also Albright 1928), and answered:
“Before ever Idaho was a State this land was reserved for the people of the
Nation. No State has a right to it. No special interest has any business there.
Americans, keep the looters out” (The Outlook 1926a: 229).
Of the two magazines, The Outlook staged the more novel campaign against
what it called “The Yellowstone Grab.” In three different issues, the editor poked
fun at, or criticized, Idaho’s residents. In the first article, the editor compared
Idaho’s per capita wealth and automobile ownership to that of other U.S. residents, finding figures “that [do] not make Idaho look impoverished.” The editor
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then wondered why “Idaho wants to take land that belongs to the American people…and put it to making more money for the people of two of her counties”
(The Outlook 1926a: 229–230). In the second article, the editors suggested that
irrigation proponents might be blinded to the area’s beauty by their agricultural
needs: water for their sugar beets. The editors then rhetorically asked, “What is
beauty to a beet?” (The Outlook 1926c: 301). In the final article, they offered
basic lessons in American geography to teach Idahoans that Yellowstone belongs
to the nation, not Idaho, and wondered: “[C]annot somebody provide a fund for
sending Idaho editors to school to relearn their geography?” (The Outlook 1926d:
394). In these three articles and throughout its yearlong campaign, The Outlook
consistently cried “Hands Off!” to “the looters,” and “invite[d] the co-operation
of public and press in its campaign for the maintenance of the integrity of
Yellowstone National Park” (The Outlook 1926a: 230). Specifically, they called
upon the public to write their congresspersons (The Outlook 1926e: 554).
The matter festered for a number of years, finally ending up before the
Yellowstone National Park Boundary Commission, which Congress established
in February 1929 to render judgment on all the boundary revisions. The commission spent two weeks examining the contested areas, and held hearings on the
matter in Cody and Jackson in 1929 (Lovin 2000). As Albright forecast, opposition to the Bechler excision ran strong in Wyoming; those present at the hearings
were nearly united “against giving Bechler Meadows over to any commercial or
irrigation project” (Albright 1926: 6). Some sportsmen’s groups such as the
Wyoming division of the Izaak Walton League and the Montana Sportsmen’s
Association opposed the project as well (Lovin 2000).
The commission delighted the conservationists in 1930 by ruling against the
irrigationists, listing two primary factual reasons. First, “[t]he Bechler River
meadows are of scenic charm and afford an engaging foreground to natural features of unusual interest,…[including] the beautiful falls of Dunanda, Silver
Scarf, and Ouzel.…This region with its setting and surroundings forms a worthwhile part of the Yellowstone Park.” Second, “there is an available site on the
Teton River, outside of the Yellowstone National Park, which in [the committee’s] judgment proves to be more economical and serviceable to the local irrigation interest than the proposed Bechler River site.” Perhaps the strongest statement was the commission’s conclusion: “Therefore, in the absence of a demonstrated public necessity, the commission finds that it is unnecessary and undesirable to break into the integrity of the Yellowstone National Park by the elimination of the Bechler River meadows from its boundaries” (Yellowstone National
Park Boundary Commission 1931: 9). Once again, the inviolate policy was
upheld: taking bites from national parks for commercial purposes was not appropriate. Irrigators would have to find another site for their dams.
Interestingly, the commission also endorsed the construction of a road from
Idaho through Bechler Meadows and Canyon to Old Faithful to make the area
more accessible to the public, and the addition of the Yellowstone River head waters–Thorofare region to the park (Yellowstone National Park Boundary
Commission 1931). The Bechler road was never built, and Wyoming sportsmen
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defeated the headwaters proposal because they did not want to lose valuable
hunting territory. In the end, the failure to add the headwaters area to Yellowstone
ironically resulted in greater protection for it, because NPS would have constructed a road over Two Ocean Pass and up the east side of Yellowstone Lake to
make the area accessible to the public (Haines 1996). By retaining that area in
the Teton National Forest, the area was kept in its wilderness condition.
For the next four years, dam proposals involving both the Bechler region and
the park’s large lakes continued to circulate. There may have been collusion
between the three local states in a project to dam Yellowstone Lake, sending
some reserved water downstream to Montana while diverting the rest through a
tunnel bored under the Continental Divide to the Snake River and thence to
Wyoming and Idaho. All of these plans, however, failed when the three-state triumvirate fell apart in the early 1930s (Haines 1996). These plans received little
overt attention from conservationists, perhaps because Secretary of the Interior
Harold Ickes strongly opposed all of them (Bartlett 1985).
Clearly, conservationists were generally successful throughout this period in
upholding national park integrity. The final round of the “war” began in 1937
when Congress approved the Colorado-Big Thompson project, which involved
the construction of a tunnel under Rocky Mountain National Park to bring west
slope water to the dry Front Range cities (Bartlett 1985). Rocky’s integrity
seemed violated, even though the tunnel did not mar the surface of any portion
of the park. Whether it violated Rocky’s integrity or not, the tunnel project soon
woke the sleeping reclamation giant outside Yellowstone and inaugurated the
final dam battle. Idaho’s irrigationists reasoned that if it was acceptable to tunnel
under Rocky Mountain, what could be wrong with damming Yellowstone Lake
and tunneling its water over to the Snake River? Idaho Senator James P. Pope and
Representative Compton I. White introduced bills into Congress in 1937 to effect
precisely such a project (Yard 1938).
Once again, NPA swung into action, despite enduring the greatest financial
stress of its history (Miles 1995). The venerable Robert Sterling Yard editorialized against the project in 1938. Seasoned by his previous efforts to defend
Yellowstone, Yard saw the many parallels with the dam battles of the early 1920s.
For example, he noted that the Idaho irrigationists again called their proposed
dam a “weir,” echoing Senator Walsh’s moniker. He suspected that Walsh “shivers in his grave, for he wanted those waters for Montana!” He echoed himself and
John Payne in stating: “‘When once you establish the principle that you can
encroach on a National Park for irrigation or water power, you commence a
process which will end only in the commercialization of them all.’” As expected,
Yard called for vigorous defense against the irrigation bills (Yard 1938: 11).
Again, many different organizations passed measures in opposition to the
dams, including the Sierra Club (Chapman 1938), Nature Magazine (1938), the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (Cammerer 1938b), the
Prairie Club (Lehman 1938), the Emergency Conservation Committee (Edge
1938), the Izaak Walton League (Cammerer 1938a), and The Wilderness Society
(The Wilderness Society 1938). As with the previous battles, they used many of
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the same arguments. Nature Magazine, for example, recycled the precedent argument, stating: “Give them an acre and they’ll soon have a whole watershed”
(Nature Magazine 1938: 426).
President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Yellowstone in 1937 and promised to
oppose any reclamation dams involving Yellowstone Lake. Realizing already the
economic value that an intact Yellowstone Park possessed, the Wyoming State
Planning Board advised against the dams in 1937 (Greenburg 1937). Even the
Secretary of the Swedish Government Committee on Planning for Recreation,
Professor L.G. Rommell, opposed the dam: “If commercial interests should be
allowed to encroach upon Yellowstone Lake, this would mean far more than
despoliation of a place.…It would be a terrific blow to the entire National Park
idea which could not fail to have its repercussions throughout the world”
(National Park Service 1938: 4).
Given the level of opposition to this proposal and the record of conservationist successes in the previous two decades, it comes as little surprise that Idaho’s
proposals were defeated. Both bills died in their respective committees on
Irrigation and Reclamation in 1938 ([Yard] 1938a; [Yard] 1938b; Bartlett 1985).
With them died the last serious proposal to dam any of Yellowstone’s waters.
Interestingly, a compromise of sorts had been struck for the Idaho irrigators
three years before. The Bureau of Reclamation agreed to add two dams to the
Minidoka project, one of them the Grassy Lake Dam at the head of Cascade
Creek, a tributary to the Falls River (Haines 1996). The Grassy Lake Dam is only
about one hundred yards from Yellowstone’s south boundary. The reservoir is
much smaller than the Bechler reservoir would have been, but does serve the
needs of Idaho’s irrigators in dry years. Still, the fact that Idaho’s irrigators
jumped on the irrigation bandwagon in 1938 with their proposal to impound
Yellowstone Lake speaks to their devotion to reclamation—or to the resiliency of
dinosaurs.
In Montana’s case, the Yellowstone River never was dammed, although the
Bureau of Reclamation proposed a large dam just upstream from Livingston at
the Allenspur dam site in 1972. As with the dams in Yellowstone Park, citizen
opposition and testimony stopped this dam, preserving the Yellowstone as the
nation’s longest remaining free-flowing river outside of Alaska (Wilkinson
1992).
Conclusion
After nearly two decades of fighting, the war seemed to be over. Through it,
conservationists established, tested, and interpreted a new policy for the national parks: that they are inviolate, inappropriate as places for commercial exploitation. In winning every battle and the full war, conservationists overturned the
defeat at Hetch Hetchy. In so doing, they proved both themselves (as conservation groups) and the nascent NPS capable of adequately protecting their charges.
At least in the parks, preservation prevailed over conservation.
Why did the conservationists win at Yellowstone when they had lost just a few
years earlier at Yosemite? There are several likely reasons. By the time of the
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Yellowstone battle, NPS existed and was able to act aggressively to defend the
park. This, the first major attack to national park integrity faced by NPS, gave it
the opportunity to prove that it was not to be pushed around as the new kid on
the block. In successfully defending Yellowstone, NPS proved itself an agency
capable of protecting its parks. Hetch Hetchy, in contrast, was in part victim of
administrative neglect: while the Army did an admirable job protecting Yosemite,
they were not as zealous a protector of it as the NPS administrators were in
Yellowstone.
Furthermore, Yellowstone benefited in another way from the unique position
of its battle in time: not only was there now a National Park Service, but there
was also a National Parks Association. This private group of individuals was
expressly devoted to preservation of the national parks, and acted repeatedly to
defend Yellowstone. It is true that Yosemite had its Sierra Club, but the Club at
that time was primarily an outing association, not as much a conservation group.
Indeed, the Hetch Hetchy issue deeply divided the Sierra Club; while it responded in defense of the park, its defense was not as vigorous as that of NPA with
Yellowstone. NPA had no such division; it cut its teeth on the Yellowstone dam
battle, galvanized conservationists nationwide in support of preservation, and
stuck to its cause tenaciously.
Additionally, the balance of people who stood to profit versus those who stood
to lose from the two dams had shifted. All the residents of San Francisco stood
to benefit from the Hetch Hetchy Dam, whereas a relative few irrigators stood to
benefit from the Yellowstone dams. Only a few people knew Hetch Hetchy well
enough to sense the aesthetic loss of damming it; by contrast, almost all visitors
to Yellowstone stood to lose in the damming of Yellowstone Lake. The Montana
and Idaho irrigators were unable to overcome this sensitive weakness, whereas
San Francisco derived strength from its large numbers.
Finally, and perhaps most important, there was no formal policy at the time of
Hetch Hetchy against dams in national parks. As this article has detailed, the
Yellowstone dam battle established that policy by 1923. But, the Yellowstone
dam battle would probably not have been won without Hetch Hetchy. In a way,
the country needed a Hetch Hetchy somewhere in the national parks to illustrate
what did not belong in them, to demonstrate that national parks should be inviolate. It may be easier to actually see what is wrong in a park than to imagine it;
Yosemite provided the illustration of what not to do in Yellowstone.
Given the popularity of utilitarian conservation in the time between the two
presidents Roosevelt, it is somewhat surprising that reclamation was stopped in
Yellowstone. The fact that this strong public policy was stopped speaks to
Yellowstone’s strength as a preservation icon, to the zeal of those defending the
park, and to the popularity of the national park idea. Although the irrigators had
the best of motives in mind, their desires were irreconcilable with the preservation of Yellowstone. Moreover, their attacks on the park affirmed and cemented
its preservation; few would think of tampering with Yellowstone in the future.
The policy was broadened to all national parks with the Echo Park controversy in Dinosaur National Monument in the 1950s, and with the Grand Canyon
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dam controversy in the 1960s. In both of these battles, the Bureau of Reclamation
proposed placing large dams in the national parks, but was prevented from doing
so by conservationists. David Brower, leader of the Sierra Club, was a leading
figure in both of these latter efforts, effectively leading conservationists on
nationwide campaigns against the dams. As with the later rounds of dam proposals in Yellowstone, these two battles reaffirmed that national parks are inviolate.
Conservationists established a very strong principle with Yellowstone. Indeed,
it is one that they defended perhaps too vigorously in future years, when the
question of including Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park came up in the
1930s. After using it for years as an example of ugly commercialism, conservationists were hard put to support its inclusion in the proposed park. Believing that
any industrial use did not belong in national parks, and nervous about opening
the door to the irrigators again, organizations such as NPA and the Wilderness
Society opposed its inclusion, into the late 1940s (The Wilderness Society 1938;
Righter 1982). Clearly, they had good reason to uphold the policy. However, it
can be argued that all policies need exceptions—wisely chosen ones, of course.
The magnificence of the Tetons perhaps justified such; certainly the ticky-tack
commercialism already present there in the 1940s did. Eventually, conservationists made that exception with Jackson Lake, in such a way that more cries for
national park reclamation did not appear. They were able to have their cake and
eat it too.
It seems as though each generation of Americans must relearn the important
lesson of national park inviolability. In 1991, the Clear Rock Resources
Company of Sheridan, Wyoming, proposed still another dam at Fishing Bridge:
an eleven-foot dam that would have raised the level of Yellowstone Lake by five
feet. As the reclamationists did sixty years earlier, Clear Rock promoted the
dam’s benefits, suggesting that its low profile “will make [it] nearly invisible to
traffic crossing Fishing Bridge” and that it “would have a stabilizing influence on
lake levels with potential benefits for the lake shore environment…” (Barker
1991). In response, NPS, thanks to the strong policy established earlier, was able
to quash this threat with only one letter two weeks later (Ponce 1991). Still, this
surprising proposal does bear truth to what Yard wrote in 1938 at the conclusion
of the final dam battle: “[T]he threat has been staved off, [but] for as long as the
waters of Yellowstone Lake are kept inviolate they will be a continual challenge
to irrigationists.…The fight for Yellowstone will be a continuous affair” ([Yard]
1938a). National parks are secure, but only as long as they are defended.
Epilogue
After two hours of hiking in the rain across Bechler Meadows in Yellowstone,
my friend Dave and I arrive at the fern-covered mouth of Bechler Canyon. The
flat meadows offer glimpses of the Tetons through the clouds to the south. Now,
though, the trail gradually begins to climb up the canyon through an open forest
of huge spruce and fir trees. Right at the mouth of the canyon we see Ouzel Falls,
the first of many we would pass the next two days.
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We hike on through intermittent showers, crossing narrow log bridges, eating
huckleberries, and stopping for breaks at Colonnade, Iris, and the recently
renamed Albright Falls. In another three miles we finally arrive at our campsite,
known as Three River Junction, for the three forks of the Bechler River that come
together there: the Phillips, Gregg, and Ferris forks. That evening we carry our
cook stove a mile farther upstream to the hotpot on the Ferris Fork, eating supper between bouts of soaking. The hot springs warming this fork are so large that
we choose our desired water temperature by walking up or downstream. After the
long day, we relax well into the evening, returning to our tent after dark (and
stumbling over roots when the batteries in our only flashlight fails on the way
back). The next day we follow the Ferris Fork farther upstream to another four
waterfalls, then retrace our steps and hike out to our car in sunshine. We pass
many hikers and fishers en route, as well as several moose. The last hike of my
first summer in Yellowstone, I would be lured back to this marvelous—and
undammed—corner of Yellowstone many more times.
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306
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why is it? Copy of brochure. “Irrigation and Dam Problems 1920–1921” scrapbook.
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Archives.
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House Document 710, 9.
Michael J. Yochim, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Department of
Geography, 384 Science Hall, 550 North Park Street, Madison, Wisconsin
53706; [email protected]
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